Are You There, God? It’s Me, Naomi.
Rosh Hashana: Time to pause, reflect, reconsider, plan ahead. I started off the year with a bang by missing the children’s service. Oops. I guess I’ll have to atone for that in about a week.
This whole personal-introspection thing is coming up at a handy time, however; I’ve recently set myself a goal of writing four personal essays in the next four weeks. I’m a quick writer; I can usually slam three hundred words together in about an hour and have them sound pretty good. (Maybe not great, but that’s where editing comes in.) The first essay practically poured out of me; I was in that writerly zone where you just know the next word is the right one, and so is the one after that, and the one after that one, too. A beautiful thing.
But this next essay I’m working on? Oy. It’s one of those times when you realize you were looking at something in the exact wrong way — and you come to this realization because every sentence you write sounds wooden and trite. I have adept avoidance techniques, both in writing and in life. I attack my personal stuff by hiding behind someone else — I convince myself that I’m upset on behalf of my daughter, for example, or that I’m frustrated by something my mother is doing. I can get away with this in my head, but putting it on paper gives proof to the lie. Sometimes it’s not them — it’s me.
